And certainly he was in one of his more spiritual moments just now, for there were no Turks about, his ambition to command a fine ship was satisfied, and the Capsina seated opposite to him had never so compelled his admiration. To-night there was something triumphant and irresistible in her beauty, her draught of sparkling happiness had given a splendid animation to her face, and that flush which as yet he had only associated in her with anger or excitement showed like a beacon for men's eyes in her cheek. But in her face to-night the heightened color and sparkling eye had some intangible softness about them; hitherto, when it had been excitement that had kindled her, she looked more like some extraordinarily handsome boy than a girl, but to-night her face was altogether girlish, and the terms of comradeship on which Kanaris had lived with her, uncomplicated by question or suggestions of sex, were suddenly and softly covered over, it seemed to his mind, by a great wave of tenderness and affection. The Capsina, the captain of the boat, the inimitable handler of a brig, were replaced by a girl. He had been blind, so he thought; all these weeks he had seen in her an able captain, a hater of Turks--a handsome boy, if you will--and he was suddenly smitten into sight, and saw for the first time this glorious thing. But Kanaris was wrong; he had not been blind, the change was in the other. But here, coincident with the very moment of his discovery, was the moment of his departure, and he left her with another, a provokingly good-looking lad, the hero of an adventure just after the Capsina's heart, and the subject for the songs of the folk. Was not Mitsos just such as might seem godlike to this girl? In truth he was. She filled his glass again, and he sat and drank in her beauty. She seemed different in kind to what she had ever looked before--her eyes beat upon his heart, and the smile on her beautiful mouth was wine to him. He looked, weighing his courage with his chance, opened his mouth to speak, and stopped again. Truly such perturbation in the methodical Kanaris touched the portentous. The Capsina had paused after her question, but after a moment repeated it. "So why look farther for another and a worse?" she said again. "Don't look farther," he said, leaning forward across the table, and twisting the sense of her question to his own use; "look nearer rather. Look nearer," he repeated; "and, oh, Capsina--" The smile faded from her mouth but not from her eyes, for it was too deeply set therein to be disturbed by Kanaris. "What do you mean?" she said. "It is that I love you," said he. But she sprang up, laughing. "Ah, spare yourself," she said. "You ought to know I am already betrothed." "You betrothed?" "Yes, betrothed to the brig. No, old friend, I am not laughing at you. You honor me too much. Let us talk of something else."